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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 18910" data-attributes="member: 22">11/Dec/85: DYNASTY: The Quarrels v. 12/Dec/85: THE COLBYS: Shadow of the Past v. 12/Dec/85: KNOTS LANDING: To Sing His Praise v. 13/Dec/85: DALLAS: Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen v. 13/Dec/85: FALCON CREST: Strange Bedfellows“Love is secondary,” snaps King Galen when talking to his son Michael about his marriage to Amanda on DYNASTY. “Love doesn’t conquer all,” cautions Sable (quoting Donna Krebbs) when talking to her son Miles about his marriage to Fallon on THE COLBYS. “And the greatest of these is love,” concludes Reverend Rush (quoting Corinthians) at his son Joshua’s funeral service on KNOTS LANDING.Galen and Sable describe their sons' new marriages in similarly unromantic terms. “Your marriage was arranged to strengthen our position … We need Alexis and her fortune,” says Galen. “You’ve created a dynasty — a Colby Carrington dynasty. With this marriage, anything is possible,” says Sable.Galen’s newly apparent ruthless streak (“That girl and her mother can be very useful to us”) opens up the possibility that the Moldavian revolution wasn’t quite as morally black and white as has previously been implied. (“Did you ever ask yourself why there was a revolution? Did he govern, or did he merely rule?” Dex asks Alexis.) It’s clear that Galen, while assuring Alexis that he will make her "one of the richest, most powerful women in the world," considers her more expendable than she realises. Similarly on DALLAS, Angelica Nero continues to claim that her co-venture with Ewing Oil will make Jack "one of the richest men in the world” whilst going to extreme lengths to prevent JR from finding out the real truth about Marinos Shipping — whatever that might be. So it is that Soap Land’s two most notorious villains, Alexis and JR, have each been seduced by a duplicitous foreigner's promise of untold wealth and power into making an international deal where all is not as it seems.Speaking of shady deals, Gary’s suspicions are now on full alert regarding Empire Valley, especially when Greg offers to buy it from him at twice its value on this week's KNOTS. At first, Greg is his customarily cool self, appealing to Gary’s sense of family history. “You know what land means, what land has meant to the Ewings. Land is the foundation of your family’s fortune, your family’s dignity.” It’s really interesting to hear Greg’s take on the Ewings here, especially his choice of the word dignity. Somehow, one can’t imagine the Ewings themselves, or anyone else in DALLAS, using the word in such a context. Gary, however, remains unimpressed, causing Greg to get increasingly wound up. “Empire Valley was my father’s land, my family’s land,” he continues. "I want it back … Listen, Paul Galveston should never have given you that land in the first place and in your heart, you know that to be true … I gave up the United States senate to run Empire Valley for my father. My father died. Now it belongs to me. Now Paul Galveston was a bastard, but he was my father, not yours. The United States senate for THAT LAND. I became a Galveston for THAT LAND. I admitted to the world that I was his son for THAT LAND. And after I gave up the senate, after I gave up everything I ever wanted in this world, he turned around and he gave the land to YOU.” Still nothing from Gary. Finally, Greg explodes. “IT’S MY LAND AND I WANT IT BACK!!” he yells. In this childlike, red-faced outburst, he could be speaking for every Soap Land character that’s ever felt they’ve been robbed of what is rightfully theirs. If anyone on KNOTS should understand where Greg is coming from, it's Gary — he is a Ewing, after all. Instead, he responds with total cynicism. (“That was very well said. Oh, but you expect me to believe you meant it, don’t you?”). Even more ironically, Greg’s motive might ultimately be heroic — Coblentz has already told him he is prepared to kill Gary and Abby unless Greg can persuade them to sell. In amongst all of this, Gary discovers that Abby has been in cahoots with Greg all along — but what’s a little marital betrayal now that their lives, and maybe their children’s lives, are in danger? (Krystle finds herself facing a similar situation on DYNASTY when Steven arrives unexpectedly at Delta Rho and Joel threatens to hurt her daughter if she calls out to him.) If this scenario is almost identical to the one Gary, Abby and Greg found themselves in towards the end of the Wolfbridge saga two seasons ago, and if the subplot where Gary became some kind of double agent for Coblentz has now mysteriously evaporated, then that’s fine by me. The scenes where Gary faces off with Greg and then with Abby in this ep are a more than fair trade-off. Speaking of that forgotten plot, there’s a tidy symmetry in Gary missing Joshua’s wedding last season so that Coblentz could tell him “the truth” about Empire Valley and Gary missing Joshua’s funeral this week so he can uncover "the truth" about Empire Valley first hand.Having already established that she is acting out of maternal devotion to her son, this week’s episode of THE COLBYS has Sable carry out her first wicked scheme. Hoping to cast doubt on Constance's soundness of mind when she gifted her half of Colby Enterprises to Jeff, Sable tries to gaslight her sister-in-law with a disappearing then reappearing bracelet. When her efforts go unnoticed by Jason, she is obliged to up her game by tampering with the saddle on Connie's horse. (The parallel here with the riding accident Alexis arranged for Krystle in early DYNASTY is an obvious one.) However, there's an unexpected twist when her own sister Frankie rides off on the horse. Pretty soon, Frankie’s in trouble, but then Jeff rides to her rescue. Even though nothing has gone quite the way she intended, Sable ultimately achieves the effect she was after when a distressed Constance takes responsibility for the loosened saddle herself. (“Oh my God, Francesca, you could have been killed!”) “You’re shaking,” Jason observes of his wife, which suggests she isn’t as practised at Soap Land deception as Alexis or the rest of the Soap Land schemers. All of these little details add interesting shades of grey to Sable’s personality. Is she really THE COLBYS’ equivalent of Alexis, Abby and Angela, or is she simply a more resourceful version of early Sue Ellen — a desperate, co-dependent wife who has no identity beyond her family and is, therefore, willing to do anything she can to preserve it?Adam is the latest DYNASTY character to show up on THE COLBYS. As with Dominique last week, there are minor differences in how he is depicted in each show. On DYNASTY, Blake has designated him the task of dealing with a court injunction against the construction of the Carrington/Colby pipeline. On THE COLBYS, his assignment is to find out why Jason is using Zach Powers’ tankers to ship Blake’s oil out of the South China Seas. And while no one mentions Fallon’s return on this week’s DYNASTY, Adam spends most of his scenes on THE COLBYS demanding to see his sister. When he does and she hurls possibly the most sensational accusation in Soap Land history in his direction, he probably wishes he hadn’t been quite so insistent.The subject of Fallon might be off-limits on DYNASTY, but the toy car LB acquired during last week’s trip to California does make an appearance when he accidentally drives it into Rita’s legs. Her angry response (“Dammit, you little creep! Why don’t you watch where you’re going?”) is witnessed by Alexis, thereby kickstarting the long dormant Alexis/Krystle feud. “Krystle is not and could never be the kind of woman that you think she is! One day you’ll regret that you didn’t listen to me!” Alexis rants at Blake. He doesn’t take her seriously — this is the kind of paranoid stuff she’s been saying for years — only this time, of course, she’s speaking the truth: Krystle isn’t who Blake thinks she is because she isn’t Krystle at all! The lookalike plot results in further ironies. While Krystle fends off the advances of an increasingly fixated Joel at Delta Rho, Rita is doing the same thing with Blake at the mansion. The episode is also bookended rather neatly. It starts with the real Krystle banging on the door of one room (the attic at Delta Rho) pleading to be let out and ends with the fake Krystle locking herself in another (a guest room at the mansion) in order to escape Blake’s romantic attentions.Krystle and FALCON CREST’s Father Christopher find themselves in similarly uncomfortable positions this week. Joel grants Krystle the privilege of taking a bath but refuses to leave the room while she does so. Similarly, Melissa discovers Christopher skinny-dipping on her property but refuses to avert her gaze so he can retrieve his clothes. Instead, she jumps, fully clothed, into the water with him and pretty soon they’re kissing passionately. Meanwhile, the weird DYNASTY bath scene gets even weirder as Joel, his eyes trained on Krystle’s voluptuous cleavage, laments how “movies today … rely on shock and exploitation, the lowest common denominator.” (Just as Christopher’s impromptu strip is filmed from a discreet distance, Krystle’s onscreen modesty is preserved by an impregnable layer of bath time bubbles.)The aftermath of Joshua’s death on KNOTS LANDING is full of the kind of small moments we didn’t see after Bobby’s on DALLAS — awkward silences, people wondering what they should say and how they should feel. In the same way that Miss Ellie concerned herself with staying strong for her family in the wake of her son’s death, Lilimae’s first priority is to keep the truth of how Joshua died a secret. (“I don’t want people to think my son was a killer.”) In order that they get their stories straight, she gives the same instruction to Cathy as Ellie gave to Sue Ellen: “You must pull yourself together.”(Something that never previously occurred to me: It’s established this week that Joshua was twenty-four when he died, making him a year younger than Lucy. This means Lilimae might well have been pregnant when Val turned up at her door with Lucy seeking refuge from JR and his good old boys.)“Now we’ve both lost brothers,” Val tells Gary, thus creating yet another bond between them that Ben can’t share. Dusty Farlow likewise finds himself frozen out on this week’s DALLAS when Sue Ellen decides to move back to Southfork for the sake of her son. While Ben reminds silently stoic, Dusty packs his bags and leaves. There’s another, more bitter break-up on this week’s FALCON CREST between Richard Channing and his fiancee Cassandra after he refuses to believe he could be the father of the baby she’s carrying. It results in one of those unexpectedly powerful, emotionally complicated FALCON CREST scenes you just didn’t see coming. (“I wouldn’t marry you now for all the money in the world and give some other man’s bastard my name!” Richard shouts. “You are more evil than I ever could have imagined,” Cassandra replies.) Richard’s rush to judgement turns out to have been premature when it transpires his vasectomy didn’t take — a medical error on a par with the one that recently led Jason Colby to believe he had only a few months to live. He tries to find Cassandra and apologise to her, but it’s too late — she’s already skipped town for parts unknown. Perhaps she’s hooked up with Dusty Farlow on the rodeo circuit.This week’s KNOTS becomes even more poignant with the arrival of Joshua’s father Jonathan J. Rush who is intimidating, bewildered, angry and heartbroken all at the same time. It makes me wonder how different the atmosphere might have been on DALLAS had Jock had still been around when Bobby died. The scene between Lilimae and Jonathan in Val’s living room is electric. At first, Lilimae is so scared of being left alone with him that she grabs onto Val so she can’t leave the room, as if she were the child and Val the parent. Moments later, she’s brushing a tear from Jonathan's face. Soon after that, she’s angrily criticising him for the way he raised Joshua. "I tried to mould him in God’s image,” he insists. "You mean in your image,” she argues. "You waved him like some kind of trophy in front of your congregation.” Just as the burden of living up to his father may have proved too much for Joshua, a similar dilemma is expressed by Bliss on THE COLBYS: “Tell me, Mother, how do you shine in this family, how do you get any attention when your father is one of the richest men in the world, your mother’s one of the chicest, your sister’s a legal brain and your brother’s an international champion?” The same topic crops up on FALCON CREST too. “I guess it must be difficult growing up with famous parents,” suggests Greg Reardon after witnessing an icy exchange between new girlfriend Jordan and her politician father. “More than you know,” she replies cryptically.Soap Land’s mothers also come under heavy criticism for the way their children turned out this week. As an example of Patricia Shepard’s heavy-handed style of parenting, Sue Ellen recalls a dress she forced her to wear to her seventh birthday party — “blue and white dotted swiss.” (This chimes with a memory of Frankie’s in last week’s episode of THE COLBYS about her similarly controlling sister: "Sable, the last time you helped me choose 'something more fun' [to wear], it was polka dots and crinoline.”) “Oh for heaven’s sake, what does it matter what happened when you were seven?” snaps an exasperated Patricia. “Because you were still planning for me when I was seventeen,” Sue Ellen replies. "The night of my senior prom, you picked out my dress and the boy I went with. I came home drunk that night for the very first time.” Jonathan levels an even worse accusation at Lilimae: "You taught [Joshua] to seek after fame and glory and it killed him, body and soul.” If Patricia was too controlling a mother and Lilimae too influential, then Frankie was too neglectful. “Francesca, did it ever occur to you that a boy would rather have his mother than the Colby education or the Colby money?” Jeff asks her. "Right or wrong, I did what I thought was best for you,” she replies. “I did the best I knew how,” echoes Patricia on DALLAS. While Patricia and Sue Ellen end up in a tearful embrace, Jeff and Frankie are brought together after he rescues her from her runaway horse. “You called me Mother!” she gasps happily — a polar opposite moment to Lilimae’s cry of “I'm not your mama!” to her son on last week’s KNOTS. Although Joshua’s no longer around for a parental reconciliation, there’s a very touching moment at his graveside during his funeral when Jonathan’s recitation from Corinthians becomes too much for him and so Lilimae comes to his side, and they struggle through the rest of the passage together. Soap Land doesn’t get much more moving than that.Meanwhile on FALCON CREST, Jordan Roberts’ parent/child estrangement storyline is only just beginning. In contrast to her former selves, man-eaters Constance Carlyle on FLAMINGO ROAD and Racine on PAPER DOLLS and would-be seductress Jenna Wade on DALLAS, Jordan is giving out decidedly mixed signals to Greg, repeatedly encouraging his advances only to recoil from them at the very last minute. Likewise, the present incarnation of Jenna Wade withdraws from her relationship with Jack Ewing on DALLAS after he declares his romantic intentions. While Jenna’s reluctance is clearly tied to her grief over Bobby, Jordan’s seemed to be linked to her troubled relationship with her father.A couple of seasons ago, JR ironically referred Southfork as "a house of domestic bliss.” By the penultimate scene of this week’s DALLAS, in which three generations of beaming Ewings, Farlows, Krebbses and Wades assemble for a welcome home dinner in Sue Ellen’s honour, it appears to have genuinely become one. The contrast between Sue Ellen and Miss Ellie’s syrupy exchange (“I seem to need this family” “And this family needs you, Sue Ellen") and the shocking accusation at the end of this week’s COLBYS (“You’re the one who raped me — my God, my own brother!”) could hardly be greater. With the extended Ewing clan a suddenly functional family, Sue Ellen and her mother reconciled and Dusty Farlow headed back to the rodeo circuit, the only character in this storyline still behaving like they’re in a soap opera is Mandy Winger. Having come close to being officially acknowledged as JR’s partner, Sue Ellen’s return to Southfork means she’s now back on the outside looking in. This puts her in a similar position to DYNASTY’s Claudia whose inheritance from Walter was meant to legitimise her position as a Carrington, but instead she’s still bitterly referring herself as the poor relation. While Claudia has already joined forces with Adam to get back at Blake, this week’s DALLAS ends with Mandy coming to a similar arrangement with Cliff regarding JR. “Don’t get mad, get even,” he tells her as they clink champagne flutes.I totally love the juxtaposition on KNOTS between the funeral scenes and those of Gary discovering what looks like a futuristic underground laboratory hidden on Empire Valley. A cave full of sliding metallic doors, bleeping machines with flashing lights and extras in white coats going about their business, it’s reminiscent of THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN at its 70s sci-fi best. You almost expect Bigfoot or an assembly line of Fembots to appear round the next corner. “Incredible!” Gary whispers to himself just before the end credits. Damn straight it is.And this week’s Top 5 are …1 (1) KNOTS LANDING2 (2) THE COLBYS3 (4) DYNASTY4 (3) FALCON CREST5 (5) DALLAS</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?